How to Stop Drinking Alcohol: A Simple Path from Alcohol Misery to Alcohol Mastery

By Kevin O'Hara

Scared to quit drinking? Learn a new mindset that could change your life forever.

You know you need to quit. Maybe you've woken up with one too many hangovers or you're afraid your children will follow in your footsteps. If you want to quit drinking for good but you don't know where to start, then How to Stop Drinking Alcohol is the book for you.

Author and podcaster Kevin O'Hara has developed a great new way to think about stopping your drinking habit. He's upfront, no-nonsense, and he tells it to you straight. Society has brainwashed you into thinking alcohol is something glamorous or necessary. One dose of Kevin's wisdom and he'll have you thinking differently.

In this book, you'll discover:
- How to build confidence and overcome your fears about quitting
- The true risks of quitting alcohol
- The length of addiction recovery and how you can rapidly accelerate the process
- The knowledge and skills to break any habit in your life
- Four necessary mindsets to quit drinking for good

Kevin's simple, practical book turns alcohol misery into alcohol mastery. If you're sick and tired of using your time and focus before, during, and after drinking, then How to Stop Drinking Alcohol will help you get your life back.

Buy the book today to start living your life again!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin O'Hara
• Release date: Aug 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310507878

Kevin O'Hara

Kevin O’Hara is the author of Last of the Donkey Pilgrims, an autobiographic telling of his travels around the coastland of Ireland with his beloved donkey Missy. He also wrote a memoir—A Lucky Irish Lad—detailing his experience growing up as an Irish-American in the shadow of the Second World War. A psychiatric nurse for more than 25 years, O'Hara still resides in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the place to which his parents emigrated.

Book preview

How to Stop Drinking Alcohol

A Simple Path from Alcohol Misery to Alcohol Mastery

By Kevin O’Hara

For Sean x

Your unique free online quit alcohol resource

Visit: alcoholmastery.com

Copyright © 2014 by Kevin O’Hara

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Smashwords Edition, 2015

Stihlman Publishing

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Introduction

Habit, my friend, is practice long pursued, that at last becomes man himself.

Evenus

Journey’s Beginning

Welcome to How to Stop Drinking Alcohol.

It’s amazing to me now, looking back at all my years as a drinker, that I never saw a problem with what I was doing to myself or to those around me. I started drinking alcohol back in the late 1970s and I stopped at the beginning of 2013. In all that time, right up until I finally quit, I never thought I would stop drinking or that I would ever want to stop.

Then, when I did realize that I had a problem, I automatically thought that there was something wrong with me personally. I thought that I was just one of those people who couldn’t handle alcohol. That line of thinking did not come about by accident. Believing that I was an alcoholic, thinking that I probably had an addictive brain, and that there was very little I could do about it is an integral part of our alcohol consuming culture. I had been programmed to think that way and that programming had started from the day I was born.

The truth is that every alcohol drinker has been captured by the same programming. We always think about the propaganda of alcohol use coming exclusively from the alcohol companies. In fact, they have a very simple job to do in convincing us to take up the habit. By the time we get to taking our first sip of alcohol, we are already well and truly hooked into the alcohol culture. The addiction to this drug has been slowly brewing from the day you were born. We will look at this in much more detail throughout this book.

Now that I have stopped drinking alcohol, I’m loving every minute of it. With all my doubts and anxieties about a life without alcohol, once the programming was revealed and I saw alcohol drinking for what it was, a very destructive drug habit, quitting turned out to be very simple.

Quitting alcohol is extremely liberating. Your whole life will change remarkably when you alter your alcohol perceptions and see what destruction your alcohol use has been causing in your life. That’s the essence of what this book is about. With that in mind, there’s every reason to start your journey feeling very happy about your decision to quit.

Feeling Happy About Your Decision

Why should you feel happy about giving something up? Because you are not giving anything up, you are eliminating a deadly substance from your life. This drug is a toxin. Every single drop you drink contaminates your body and your mind. Alcohol represses your relationships, work life, home life, and sex life. Drinking this toxin corrupts your perceptions about yourself and about the world around you.

Furthermore, the blind acceptance of alcohol as a ‘normal’ part of a healthy life contaminates the thinking of the next generation and perpetuates this dangerous habit into the future. When we use alcohol around our children, we tell them that there is nothing wrong with it, that it’s not drug use, and that they should follow on in our footsteps when they reach adulthood.

The drinks industry would have you believe that there is such a thing as responsible drinking. Can there ever be anything responsible about deliberately consuming a poison, even in the pursuit of happiness?

The moment you stop drinking is the moment you get to make a fresh start. That is a cause for real celebration.

5% Alcohol

How to Stop Drinking Alcohol will show you that your addiction to alcohol is mostly an illusion. Like a pint of average strength beer, quitting drinking is only 5% about the alcohol. The other 95% involves making the changes to those parts of your life that have supported your alcohol drinking habit. If you choose to be an alcoholic for the rest of your life, that is exactly what you will be! All you have to do is to keep thinking that you are an alcoholic. However, if you want to lead a life that does not rely on a drug to get you through the day, you can do that as well.

You don’t need to hide from alcohol for the remainder of your days. Far from it. This book will show you how alcohol is a dangerous drug with no part to play in a healthy or natural life.

Life Long Disinformation

You will learn about the propaganda that keeps you thinking about alcohol, even when you know drinking is not good for you.

We will look at how your everyday language can affect how you see things. We’ll examine your use of words like alcoholic, moderation, recovery, and the demon drink. We will also take a close look at your expectations of the symptoms and side effects of quitting drinking. I will show you some simple tricks to alter your thinking and your entire alcohol quitting experience.

I will show you that your fears can hurt you before you even start on your journey and how making some small changes will allow you to step across your starting line full of confidence about the road ahead.

Finally, we will examine what you should realistically expect once you quit. Thankfully most of us don’t have to sign ourselves into a dry out clinic, spending the price of a small house into the bargain. Most of us can quit drinking alcohol on our own.

You Are Not Alone

There are millions of people who have already stopped drinking alcohol without the need for professional intervention. They did not need to be admitted to hospital, they did not experience serious side effects or symptoms, and they stopped taking this drug without feeling any intense cravings to ever drink alcohol again.

From my experience, and from the experiences of millions of others who have stopped drinking permanently, quitting alcohol is mostly in the mind. If you can control your thoughts, you control your actions.

Speak To Your Doctor

Before we get into the book, I’d advise anyone who is about to embark on this wonderful journey to visit their doctor first. Have a chat with them and let them know what your plans are. They’ll be only too happy to hear your great news.

Chapter One - It’s Time to Stop!

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

William James

Daily Dosing

I don’t know exactly when it was that I started drinking every day. I had reached the stage where I found it hard to relax without a few cans of beer or a bottle or two of wine. I started to need alcohol to do the normal everyday things like sleep. I never had problems sleeping when I was young; now I had to drink or I would be tossing and turning for most of the night.

I often took a day off from alcohol, maybe two if I could manage. I had to prove to myself that I could stay away from the booze. I wanted to displace any fears that I was turning into an alcoholic. My logic was really simple, if you are an alcoholic you cannot go even one day without a drink. Therefore if I could last a day or two without alcohol, even if it was only once in a blue moon, it was proof that I had it all under control and I was capable of handling my drinking.

Why Stop Now?

What finally made me want to stop?

There are so many reasons why someone will decide that enough is enough. This decision never comes easily. Normally, just like in my case, the push to quit comes after a lot of denying that there is even a problem. But eventually there comes a time when you start to weigh up your life. You clearly see that this is not what you expected. This was not the place you thought you would end up.

The Catalysts

Maybe you have had a health scare. You are feeling a pain in the liver that scares the crap out of you. A visit to the family doctor brings some worrying ‘home truths’. Or it is dawning on you that you are just not feeling that great any more.

Maybe your hangovers are lasting more than a day, maybe even stretching into two or three days. You might have reached the stage where the hangovers are becoming unbearable. Do you need to have a drink during the day just to feel some relief, just to feel normal?

Are you experiencing problems in your relationships? Perhaps your husband or wife is saying that they just can’t stand it anymore. An ultimatum has been presented to you - either the alcohol goes or the relationship.

Have you gotten in trouble with the law? Your catalyst could have happened after being stopped by the police while you were drunk behind the wheel of your car. You were loaded with a big fine, you lost your license, and you have to put up with the shame of standing in front of a packed court house while the judge issues your sentence!

Your Personal Tipping Point

In most cases there will be just the one catalyzing event. This event will not necessarily be earth shattering in its impact. The same situation might even have happened before, maybe even many times. But this time is different. Now you can feel the full force of the impact and it is changing the way you think about your drinking.

Your personal tipping point might be just one in a long line of incidents and happenings, but this is the one event that finally opens your eyes to the life you are living and what you have to look forward to if you don’t stop using alcohol.

DUI and Ten Months Off

That is just the way it was for me when I stopped drinking in 2008. I was pulled over by the police in December 2007 after leaving a pub and jumping into my car for the short spin home. I was breathalyzed on the spot, arrested, handcuffed, taken to the police station, and charged with drinking and driving.

After the embarrassment of appearing in court, I was fined heavily and my license was suspended for a year. Things could have been much worse. I still think about how lucky I was to have been stopped that night. It was the wakeup call I needed to catalyze my brain into action.

Thankfully, there was no real long term damage done. I paid the fine, learned a very valuable lesson, and moved on with my life. Although I didn’t quit for good at that time, the whole mess paved the way for my decision to quit alcohol permanently, five years later.

I stopped drinking before I appeared in court and I didn’t start again for ten months. Those ten months gave me the belief in myself that I could quit drinking long term. It took another five years, many other individual incidents and accidents, and one final catalyzing moment in late 2012, before I could finally motivate my pickled brain to take action.

New Life

How did I know it was time to finally stop using this drug for good?

My partner Esther and I moved to Spain in 2011. We had many reasons for wanting to make the move. For a start there was the change in pace. I had been working in forestry for over ten years and the damp Irish climate was beginning to take its toll on my joints. There was also the change of scenery, with the year-round sun of Alicante playing a huge part.

Near the top of the list of personal reasons, although I didn’t broadcast this one too widely, was all the cheap booze. It’s funny because I was even hiding that reason from myself. If you had come up to me in the months before we moved and asked me why we were going, I would not have mentioned booze. At least it would have been near the bottom. But as soon as we arrived at our new Spanish home, wine was one of the first things we bought, and lots of it!

We made our plans, packed our stuff, and finally drove for the ferry in late November 2012. Despite lots of appealing from me, my son wanted to stay put in Ireland. Leaving him on the last day was heart-wrenching for me at the time. In retrospect, it was something that was good for both of us. Being on his own gave him independence and self-belief. He kept pointing out to me that it was only a short flight to Spain and we could speak to each other via Skype all the time.

Fun in the Sun

Anyway, long story short, we moved to Spain and I saw Sean when